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Government to Borrow Money to Get out of Debt

Ministers today reassured the nation that the government's plans for getting the economy back on track after it got derailed in 1796, "cannot fail" and "nothing could possibly go wrong".

They also announced confidently that they are without doubt “completely stumped” and unable to explain how the nation ended up with twice as much debt as there is actual money in existence. A law of economics known as "Murphy's Law" - recently discovered by experts who have been helping the government expedite national bankruptcy - states that people will naturally always borrow more money than actually exists and then borrow more money that does not exist in order to pay it back.

However, a spokescretin, for the Treasury, Mr Sloe Deathby-Tax, pointed out that this particular cloud in the overcast heavens does have a silver lining in that Great Britain is in fact doing a lot better than the United States, which has around three times as much debt as it has money.

“It is something about which everyone in these Bankrupt Isles can feel justifiably smug.” he said.

The revelations were timed to coincide with the launch of a new initiative for tackling Britain’s mountain of debt. The Treasury has proudly announced revolutionary plans to follow the revolutionary plans of every country in Europe and “borrow lots more money” so as to get the nation out of debt. This will happen in line with Brexit, in which the government will pretend to leave Europe - or alternatively pretend to want to leave - whilst remaining in it and borrowing lots of money in order to pay Europe for pretending to not want Britain to leave.

The government is optimistic that this borrowing strategy, known as "quantitive penury" will bring about a miracle in which the entire nation will become rich without having to be governed sensibly.

It is a strategy that has a distinguished history having been tried 1142 times since the beginning of the twentieth century, with consistent results. Admittedly none of those results include sound fiscal management, solvency or prosperity - or indeed national survival - but experts are quick to point out that modern economics is not about prosperity or solvency; if it had been it would have produced some by now. However, confidence is high that it will probably work this time so long as the natural laws of the universe are suspended for a while.

But just in case it doesn’t work (or as some experts put it: certainly won’t) contingency plans are in place. Central to these plans is the revolutionary new idea of persuading America to have another war and then helping her out by playing a key supporting role such as doing as we are told, making the sandwiches and so forth.

While this won’t work either and will undoubtedly have the opposite effect of getting us deeper into debt, it does have the virtue of keeping millions of people’s minds off the inevitable bankruptcy proceedings and the arrival of bankers to confiscate the national infrastructure.